Yidu "story township chief" story does not go away

Hubei Daily News Pictured: Xu Glory guides the "story stars" at the story transmission research base.

Text/Photo Reporter Hai Bing Correspondent Chen Shiqin Yang Jianfeng

On the afternoon of the 8th, in the quaint Qingjiang Ancient Town Folk Culture Village in Yidu, several "story stars" gathered at the Xu Glory Story Transmission research base and took turns to speak on the stage. Liu Yichen and Li Jiale of Qingjiang Primary School brought "Frogs and Turtles" and "The SadNess of Little Fat Dun", and Xu Mingcan of Experimental Primary School brought "Mr. Xiguo"... After the report speech, Grandpa Xu commented and guided one by one, and wished everyone "the year of the rooster to smell the chicken dancing, and go to a higher level".

Xu Glory, who won the silver medal for story performance at the first China Story Festival and was awarded the title of "Storyteller", has cultivated more than a thousand "story stars" in recent years.

More than 800 cassettes filled with folktales

In the Yidu dialect, "telling the ancients" is to tell stories, similar to the "Kanda Mountain" in the north and the "Pendulum Dragon Gate Array" in the southwest.

"Telling the ancients" and "listening to the ancients" has a tradition in Yidu, and Xu Glory grew up listening to folk tales. Since participating in the tour of the "Yichang County Revolutionary Story Performance Team", Xu Glory, who is the same age as the Republic, has been engaged in story speech, song art creation, and folk literature collection and collation for more than 50 years. During this period, he rode different styles of bicycles or worn-out or semi-new bicycles, traveled through various townships and village groups in Yidu, searched for 180 folk artists and folk tales, and collected more than 2,400 folk tales. ”

In April 2001, the 52-year-old Xu Rongrong retired from his position as deputy director of the Yidu City Cultural Bureau and decided to continue his beloved career, so for countless days and nights, he repeatedly listened to the stories he had saved and carefully sorted out the tapes. Kung Fu pays off, and he has successively published nearly 40 books on Yidu celebrity stories, place name stories, animal stories, and legends of wind objects. Among them, the English-Chinese contrast edition of "The Story of Yang Shoujing" won the Chinese Popular Literature Award, and the "Yidu Folk Tales Complete Book" won the "Mountain Flower Award", the highest award in Chinese folk literature.

In addition, Xu Glory also used witty and humorous performances to make Yidu folk tales go from the fields to factories, institutions, and schools, and led the Yidu story team to the hall of elegance.

Ledang "township chief" cultivates more than a thousand "story stars"

In May 2000, Yidu was awarded the title of "Hometown of Chinese Folk Tales" by the Ministry of Culture. As the "head goose" of Yidu story, Xu Glory's hard work is in everyone's eyes, jokingly calling him the "township chief" of "the hometown of Chinese folk tales".

Xu Glory is happy to be this "township mayor", as the chairman of the Yidu Story Society, Xu Glory has continued to hold dozens of folk tale training courses under the strength of all parties. Today, the Story Society has more than 200 members, including more than 20 folk tale masters who have been active in the big stage in the countryside for a long time.

In order to inherit the story culture of Yidu, Xu Glory also actively promotes the development of children's stories. At present, Yidu has held 10 sessions of children's story king creation speech competition, held more than ten children's story creation speech training classes, held the "Children's Story Essay Evaluation Award" for many consecutive years, and more than 2,000 works have appeared in various newspapers and periodicals.

Last year, another children's story reader collected and co-edited by Xu Glory, "Houde Story Club", was published. Yidu Experimental Primary School, Honghuatao Primary School, Qingjiang Primary School, Yang Shoujing Primary School, Lucheng Yixiao and other 5 schools have also been officially identified as the counseling schools of Xu Glory's story transmission and research base, and Xu Glory takes turns to go to these schools every week to provide voluntary tutoring to children hand in hand.

Under the efforts of Xu Glory, more than a thousand "story stars" have emerged in Yidu City, Xu Glory and the "story stars" participated in the "China Story Festival", "National Children's Story Competition", "National Children's Radio Story Competition", "China Children's Red Story Society" and other events, and frequently won gold and silver, these activities not only effectively inherited excellent folk stories, enlightened children's minds, trained students' eloquence, and also made the "hometown of Chinese folk stories" famous.